He piled up.
www.cnn.com
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He piled up.
www.cnn.com
good riddance
"It is cheap to attack Israel. I am certainly not going to make a cheap attack on Israel by howling in the woods with the rest of the wolves." - Geert Wilders
It's a loss.... he was a good guy.
Mil - stands for the countless MILlions of reasons not to work.
kick Cheney too
"It's a loss.... he was a good guy."
I think not. His strategy of bypassing instead of destroying the Iraqi forces left them free and armed to fight again.
His strategy of having too few troops let anarchy thrive and opposition forces coalesce in post-invasion disorder.
His embracing of RMA lightfighter nonsense (despite the warnings of Somalia and Chechnya) killed and wounded my brother servicemen and women when they were sent to urban combat in light trucks (HMMWVs) instead of armored fighting vehicles of which we had plenty.
His "transformation" programs are sucking money from basic needs of the services. He had a mandate to ask for a Cold War buildup but did not, and the result is military overstretch.
Rummy was the best SecDef a Jihadi could ask for, and now that he is out of my chain of command I have no problem saying so. Plenty of other G.I.s back this up and their thoughts on the matter are available on many military forums online.
I have never in 25+ years seen a SecDef do so much damage.
Posted by farmwall:
I think not. His strategy of bypassing instead of destroying the Iraqi forces left them free and armed to fight again.
?
His strategy of having too few troops let anarchy thrive and opposition forces coalesce in post-invasion disorder.
Nobody could predict how unstable Iraq was, not even Saddam himself.
His embracing of RMA lightfighter nonsense (despite the warnings of Somalia and Chechnya) killed and wounded my brother servicemen and women when they were sent to urban combat in light trucks (HMMWVs) instead of armored fighting vehicles of which we had plenty.
This is a tactical decision not a strategy. They experimented - they learned.
I have never in 25+ years seen a SecDef do so much damage.
In the last 25+ there was nothing of the sorts of what is happening today. I don't think any other Secrectary of Defence would have performed any differently. It just happened that 9/11 fell on Rumsfield's watch....
Mil - stands for the countless MILlions of reasons not to work.
Actually a total non-issue and the real issue was the opposite - they dismantled the Iraqi armed forces and thus were left with nothing to build on...which is pretty much exactly where they are now - with nothing (or worse - they are traning future jihadists...Originally Posted by Mil
This is incorrect - there were folks (including myself) predicting much like what has happened (though I thought they would be fighting each other more at first...(like they are doing now...and this is nothing compared to what we are going to see very soon)...of course (again prior to the war itself) I predicted that our occupation would last no longer then 2 years...I thought that the American people would have had enough by then...but here is to overestimation...
Here I do agree a bit with farmall - this approach has had major repercussions within our armed services that cost lives, that is costing money and that we are having to go back in and retrofit and fix after the fact. Funny how we always are fighting the last war (such made sense for a 1991 style gulf war...and perhaps for Iraq & Afghanistan...if all were were trying to do was to "shock and awe" and get out...
Rummy alienated the military leadership by imposing just the sort of civilian micromanagement that doomed the Vietnam war - and worse. He became enamored with some sexy studies that looked to the future of war and how it would be and said this is the way we go...unfortunatly you can't always choose your battlefields and it doesn't always make sense just to abandon capabilities that had been developed and tested over time for untested - sounds good - theory. Rumsfield is a very very smart man...unfortunatly he thinks he is a good deal smarter even then he is...and that is dangerous. Its not correct to say that any other secdef would have done it the same - he bucked the system in a number of ways (not always good)...he never played well with others and the DOD has no business running foreign policy - we already have a large department that does this..
The strategy is Bush, Cheney and Rice. They are mostly to blame. Rumsfeld implements the strategy.
That being said.
He lost my confidence when he started jailing soldiers and Marines for over aggressive action in a hot war.
If Bush would have fired him sooner then the Republicans might a lost fewer seats in Congress. That is something to think about.
Oh yes, I agreewith you about the micromanagement that Rummy implemented. Stupid and very Viet Nam. You think we would have learned.
Army: Fox Base, Delta One...We are taking fire.....Wait one Delta One......Wait for Washington DC.....Wait....Wait.....Wait.....Washington says ok....go ahead and fire back.....are you there?....come in Delta One.....Delta One, are you there??
Republicans needed a scapegoat and Rumsfeld was chosen to fill this position
Rumsfeld was a Cold-War dinasaur who didn't adapt to the post-modern post-Cold-War reality. It's a good decision to let him go, but one of those too-little-too-late things.
You think? ...I'm somewhat doubting...
He has the unique distinction of being both the youngest and oldest Secy. DoD. Weird.
Source Time
I'd recommend a vist to the site, just for picture no. 4 alone.
---------------
Feb. 12, 2002
"As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns - that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.
Jan. 9, 2002
"I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty." In an interview with the Washington Post
Feb. 7, 2003
"It is unknowable how long [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." To U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy
Feb. 28, 2003
"Needless to say, the President is correct. Whatever it was he said."
Dec. 27, 2001
"We do know of certain knowledge that [Osama bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead. And we know of certain knowledge that we don't know which of those happens to be the case."
Jan. 4, 2002
"Well, you know, something's neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, I suppose, as Shakespeare said."
Oct. 3, 2006
"That's all you guys do is read these books. You ought to get a life." To reporters during a press briefing
Jan. 29, 2001
"Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance." In a Wall Street Journal article he wrote entitled "Rumsfeld's Rules"
Aug. 3, 2006
"I have never painted a rosy picture. I have been very measured in my words, and you� have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I have been excessively optimistic. I understand this is tough stuff." At Senate hearings, in an exchange with Sen. Hillary Clinton
July 24, 2003
"I don't do quagmires."
Dec. 8, 2004
"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
Apr. 3, 2003
"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started."
Source Time
As a youth I used to weep in butcher's shops.
"In the last 25+ there was nothing of the sorts of what is happening today. I don't think any other Secrectary of Defence would have performed any differently. It just happened that 9/11 fell on Rumsfield's watch...."
Most of the damaging Rumsfeld policies are NOT 9/11 driven, and any he disagreed with he could have changed based on DECADES of experience. The guy is no wimp, but he did severe damage to the US military by ignoring ongoing problems and past experience.
The necessity to fight effectively in MOUT operations was known for many years before Rumsfeld's most recent tenure.
The procurement death spiral was known long before that as well.
The flaw in sending unarmored vehicles that cannot surmount barricades in urban situations was highlighted in Somalia, where PAKISTANI Patton tanks and M-113 APCs rescued US soldiers who should have had armored fighting vehicles to begin with! The Paks knew they'd be fighting in urban terrain, and they did not bring light trucks to the fight.
We knew we'd be fighting in urban terrain AGAIN and still brought light trucks to the fight.
Failure to control roads (not push through opposition, but control routes in the first place) set up convoy after convoy for simple IED attacks.
What is an IED? IED is a new name for "Command Detonated Mine", a common item in Viet Nam! We are fighting convoy battles against the same sort of weapons (IEDs/mortars/mines/ambushes) that we were fighting when I was a toddler in the early 1960s, yet we did not arrive prepared to do that and had scrapped KNOWN effective systems (like gun trucks) we had to re-invent for Iraq. ACAVS had gunshields in Viet Nam after the battle of Ap Bac, yet gunshields were removed afterwards. Medal of Honor winner SFC Smith died on an UNSHIELDED M-113.
"The strategy is Bush, Cheney and Rice. They are mostly to blame. Rumsfeld implements the strategy."
Incorrect. Bush, Cheney, and Rice choose the country to attack and sign off on the plans offered by SecDef and JCS. Those plans had time to gestate since 1991!
There is obviously no presumption of military expertise where the White House in concerned and that isn't their job.
The DoD, from Rummy on down through those he chose to lead, is responsible for the rest. As SecDef he is supposed to have comprehensive military knowledge and experience.
The White House did not pick what methods to use, what force structure to send, or how many to send. A Dolchstoss theory isn't supportable, because SecDef has a free hand to give ORDERS to every person in the US military.
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